The considerations outlined in earlier parts of the book are recalled in order to emphasize the importance of unconscious processes in the development of religious cognition. In this context, the importance of mythological aspects of religious texts is stressed, since the archetypal resonances of these texts – especially when reflected in liturgical usage or used in contemplative exercises – are of considerable importance in relation to noetic apprehension of the divine reality. In this context, the five theses set out in in Chapter 1 are discussed in more detail. In addition, problems of elitism and its suppression are discussed, as well as the position of those who claim to be spiritual but not religious. It is suggested that these people may, in fact, need one of the ‘doctrinal religions’ that they shun if they are to make progress on the spiritual path on which they find themselves.

The notion of noetic perception may be expanded in relation to the role of the imagination in revelatory experience. Here, the expansion of neo-Platonic perspectives in the understanding of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is significant, as are the notion of the imaginal developed by Henry Corbin and the understanding of the role of the human imaginative faculty in religious visionary experience, as explored by Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This kind of analysis has implications for solving certain puzzles inherent in the New Testament accounts of visions of the risen Christ. However, questions arise in relation to this understanding, and these may be tackled in part through recent Christian thinking about the notion of revelation, in which the focus is no longer on ‘information about God’ but on what Yves Congar has called an orientation towards salvation. This suggests an understanding akin to the perennialist separation of exoteric and esoteric aspects of religious traditions in the sense of suggesting a two-component, psychological-referential model of revelatory experience.

The distortions of Augustinian and Calvinist approaches to natural theology are noted, and the different approach of Eastern Orthodoxy is examined, especially in relation to the notion of noetic perception in the approach of Gregory of Nyssa and to its application to the contemplation of nature as understood by Maximus the Confessor. More purely ‘philosophical’ considerations are also examined, especially in relation to the ‘weight’ that is assigned to competing arguments. In this context, the concept of noetic perception is applied to the notion of ‘baptized reason’. It is suggested that in relation to the praeambula fidei approach of Thomas Aquinas, even scholastic versions of natural theology may need revision because of nuances in that work that are often unrecognized.